Perhaps that title is a bit misleading, maybe it should read “After Leopard, Apple Planning 2 to 3 More OS Upgrades Before Microsoft Moves Past Vista – IF Microsoft Hits Their 2010 Target for Windows 7, Which Is By No Means A Certainty”.

OS X 10.5 “Leopard” is launching Friday at 6:00 PM, but Steve Jobs is already talking about the future for the operating system, and it’s a future that he thinks will see an average of one new OS X a year:

Mr. Jobs said that Leopard would anchor a schedule of product upgrades that could continue for as long as a decade.

“I’m quite pleased with the pace of new operating systems every 12 to 18 months for the foreseeable future,” he said. “We’ve put out major releases on the average of one a year, and it’s given us the ability to polish and polish and improve and improve.”

Given that it took Microsoft over 5 years (and billions of dollars spent) to pump out Vista – an operating system that many are deeming unacceptable – who knows how long it will actually be before Microsoft can create another one. If OS X is at 10.8 or 10.9 at that time or even OS XI (is that what it’s going to be called?) at that time, and the current trends of Apple eating up market share continues, Microsoft could have a very large headache by then.

Sure, some people don’t like Apple’s strategy of upgrades and product refreshes every single year, but I think most would definitely take it over a five-year waiting period given how quickly technology changes in this day and age.

MSFTextrememakeover has a great post entitled ‘What if Microsoft wasn’t a screwup?‘, that I think is a must-read for anyone interested in the whole Microsoft vs. Apple and Microsoft vs. Google debates.

Meanwhile Forbes is calling Microsoft the “underdog” now to the likes of Google and delves into Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s plans for a comeback. Here’s one of my favorite lines:

“If we produce an advertising business that generates another $5 to $10 billion profit, Wall Street will reward that,” Ballmer predicted. “We just have to do that.”

Ha. Yes, and if you can make a product that sells 100 million units I think Wall Street would probably reward that too. Or maybe if you make something new that everyone in the world will use, they’ll reward that too! It’s just a pesky matter of doing any of this.

Memo to Microsoft: You Just Have To Do It. Why didn’t they think of that before?! All they have to do is do it. They’ve just been sitting around the past 5 years not doing it, thinking that was the right approach, but Ballmer has figured it out with his secret Wall Street decoder ring – that he probably just stole or bought for some ridiculous amount.

In 5 years when Microsoft employees are checking their stock price on their Google Finance widget run through the OS X dashboard, they’re sure to look at Ballmer’s Comeback Plan as the turning point for the company.

Okay, I exaggerate – but Microsoft does need a new strategy and given everything that I’ve seen and read, Steve Ballmer does not seem to be the one to come up with or implement it. Every indication seems to be that Apple is going to continue to rise while Microsoft continues to stagnate. Maybe they can hire Steve Jobs when he retires from Apple.